by Mark Gilleo
Dan stood as Ridge regained his balance. Dan stepped back to gain distance and then turned away. He drove his zip-tied hands forward until his arms were straight in front of him. He reversed directions on his arm thrust and pulled his elbows back as far as they would go with adrenaline-pumping force. The law of physics did the rest as the zip ties on his wrist snapped at the point where they were joined.
Dan turned and Ridge’s massive right hand contacted with his forehead, causing the gash on his eyebrow to re-open. The blood flowed more freely with the second injury to the same location and Dan strained to see through the crimson lens of his left eye.
The next moment Dan was in a bear hug, his breath evacuated, his ribs crushed. Through his impaired vision, Dan stared into the darkness of Ridge’s black pupils.
Face-to-face, Ridge held Dan in his arms, his muscles straining, veins bulging on his neck. Holding Dan in a bear hug, Ridge walked steadily in the direction of the hanging noose. Dan unleashed a battery of assaults on Ridge’s head. He used open palm slaps to burst the eardrums and thumb thrusts to the eyes. Ridge was unfazed. Dan tried to breathe as he looked over his shoulder at the fast-closing destination. Feet and arms flailing, Dan felt the edge of the noose slip over his head and onto his forehead.
Dan thrashed his neck violently and the noose fell off to the side. Dan jammed his fingers into the base of Ridge’s throat and Dan heard a small groan. Again Dan smashed his open palms into the side of Ridge’s ears. Ridge squeezed tighter and readjusted his aim on the noose. Every move of Dan’s arms opened his torso to more assault. His diaphragm was compressed to its limit. The physical exertion combined with decreased lung capacity took its toll. Frantic, Dan saw stars. Somewhere in his oxygen-deprived brain a countdown began. Eight seconds before unconsciousness, he thought. Eight seconds before the end. Eight seconds before Ridge here can do anything he wants to me.
In one quick motion, Dan moved both his hands to Ridge’s face and shoved his thumbs into opposite corners of the big man’s mouth. Ridge’s eyes bulged as Dan drove his thumbs into the crease between Ridge’s molars and the inside of his cheeks. With three seconds before blackout, Dan released a primal yell and yanked his thumbs outwards and back towards Ridge’s ears.
The flesh on Ebony’s face ripped like blood-sewn fabric, his cheeks now open wounds, molars visible. Dan’s feet hit the floor as Ridge reached for his own face. The guttural scream that exploded from Ridge sent the hair on Dan’s neck up at attention as he gasped for air.
Ridge’s eyes flashed open in horror at his blood-soaked hands. Dan raised his foot and stomped downward, meeting Ridge’s shin and powering downward to crush the top bone of Ridge’s foot. A second stomp to the end of Ridge’s toes was next, followed by a kick to the groin and an outside knee to the side of the thigh.
Ridge regained his posture, face open, blood flowing. He reversed the assault, swinging wildly at his smaller opponent. Dan sidestepped the raging bull and then reached up for a support beam in the ceiling. Hanging by his arms he kicked both feet as Ridge turned. The soles of Dan’s shoes met the middle of Ridge’s face. The big man stumbled back and Dan charged forward, shoulder first. The impact drove Ridge backwards, leaving him teetering on the edge of the small, covered well. Dan moved in for the final assault and the deafening discharge from the .45 handgun silenced the room.
Dan slowly looked over his shoulder and found himself staring down the barrel of the .45. Sue’s face was perfectly aligned down the center of the handgun on the other side of the sights.
Chapter 40
—
The sound of snapping wood planks ripped Dan’s attention away from the business end of the handgun and back at Ridge, who was now grasping his chest. The inertia of the gunshot provided enough energy to tip the ex-marine over the lip of the old well. His backside hit first, momentarily resting on the wood planks as if the big man was choosing to sit down. Dan felt a moment of guilt as he took one final look at a life wasted. Then the wood-planked top of the well cracked and Ridge disappeared, his feet folding upward towards his bloody face as the darkness below welcomed him.
Dan stood and Sue’s hands started to shake. He stepped off the firing line, raised his hand slowly, and repeated what he had been taught when confronted with an armed adversary. “Relax. I am unarmed. Lower the gun,” he repeated soothingly.
Sue slowly dropped her hands before releasing her grip on the weapon. The gun thudded softly on the dirt cellar floor. Her hands were still bound together at the wrist with zip ties. Her unbuckled belt hung from the restraints between her still-bound hands, the black leather accessory dangling down to her knees.
“Nice escape.”
“My hands were tied in front of me, looped around the belt. All I had to do was unbuckle it and pull. The gun was loaded on the table.”
“And I kept him occupied for you. Are you OK?”
“I will be.”
Dan retrieved the knife Major used to cut the rope for the noose. He sliced the remains of the zip ties off each wrist and then cut the final tie off his calf. Freed, he turned his attention towards Sue.
After several additional precision cuts with the knife, Sue joined Dan in emancipation. Hands still shaking, she rubbed her wrists. Dan crouched and approached Major’s unmoving body. He checked for a pulse on Major’s carotid. “He is still alive.”
“What do we do?”
“Get the hell out of here.”
Dan rifled through Major’s pockets, tossing car keys, a wallet, and a cell phone into a pile next to the knife he had just used. He looked up momentarily at the noose dangling above and performed a sign of the cross, silently mumbling something to himself. He moved Major’s belongings from the ground to the wood table as Sue carefully approached the top of the well. Not trusting her coordination with a body full of adrenaline, she lowered herself onto all fours and peered over the edge into the blackness. “How deep is it?”
“About thirty feet. You shot him center mass at pointblank range with a .45. He did not survive.”
Sue’s face turned pale with a mix of emotions. A combination of guilt, disgust, and admiration. “You tore his face open.”
“He was trying to kill me. It was a move of last resort. I was told the technique was called ‘the Joker.’ The reason is obvious.”
“Where did you learn that?”
“A special forces soldier. I was told it was most effective as an escape technique. Something to be used when you need to remove yourself from a situation with multiple assailants. To divert the attention of an angry mob, for example. I wasn’t sure it would actually work.”
“It was the most awful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Certainly in the top ten,” Dan conceded, before starting to parse the inventory on the old wooden table. He reacquired his cell phone and turned the volume back up. He lovingly retightened the strap on his newly purchased watch. He picked up the vial of liquid that had been injected into Major and held the small glass bottle to the light.
“What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. But my guess is Major was never going to walk out of this basement. Ridge had a plan and Major didn’t know about it. Reed Temple is cleaning up after himself. Paid Ridge to take care of Major. And you can bet there was a plan to end Ridge as well.”
“I guess we did Temple a favor.”
“You did him a favor. I merely injured him. You shot him.”
Sue rolled her eyes and then grabbed her necklace, glanced at the broken clasp and carefully slid it into her pocket.
Dan grabbed a handful of zip ties and shoved them into the thigh pockets on his pants. He pocketed the knife Major had used to cut the rope and retrieved the gun from the floor, releasing the magazine into his hand and ejecting the round in the chamber. He grabbed Sue’s cell phone off the table and held it up. “Is this yours?”
Sue re
ached for the phone and Dan retracted his arm. He deftly turned and tossed the phone into the well. A single clank reverberated from the open hole as the phone hit the stone wall on the way down.
“What the hell did you do that for?”
“Insurance. I don’t want you to disappear again and claim you have no knowledge of what transpired here.”
Dan pulled Major’s driver’s license from his wallet and held the ID up to eye level. “Says here Major’s real name is Steve Jackson. Lives in the West End, near Georgetown. ” Dan poked through the rest of the wallet and then slipped Major’s driver’s license into his pocket. He plucked a set of car keys off the far end of the table and held them up. “What car did you come in?”
“The burgundy four-door sedan,” Sue replied, sulking. “The same one you took pictures of during the stakeout at the coffee shop.”
“Were you blindfolded?”
“After they put me in the car, they bound me and blindfolded me.”
“When you arrived, how long was the walk from the car to the house?”
“A few seconds.”
“Good, then the car is in the driveway or on the street in front of the house. We need transportation.”
“What happened to my car?” Sue asked.
“I traded up and Reed Temple took the new one.” Dan gripped the keys in his fist and joined Sue in taking a panoramic glance around the basement.
“I don’t think we are going to be able to clean this up,” Sue said.
“Not you and I. Broken furniture. Blood. A body in the well. Another unconscious on the floor. Footprints . . . Forget it. Time to go.”
“Where?”
“Outside. I need to make a couple of calls.”
Chapter 41
—
Dan opened the passenger door and with a swoop of the hand, gestured for Sue to enter Ebony and Ivory’s burgundy sedan. She grudgingly accepted the offer, still miffed over the demise of her phone and the possible implications of the dead man in the well with a gunshot wound in his chest.
As her derrière found the passenger seat, Dan grabbed her wrist with his vise-like grip. A second later her arm was strapped with a zip tie, attached to the handle above the passenger door frame. Her arm extended upward as if stuck in a perpetual pose of asking a question.
“What the . . . ?”
“Additional insurance.”
“You still don’t trust me?”
“Not yet.”
Sue struggled with the tie-down, frantically pulling her arm as Dan walked to the front of the car, staring at her through the windshield. He stopped near the front left fender and started to dial.
—
The National Harbor’s new casino drove the commoners back to their middle-class neighborhoods on the weekends with a fifty-dollar-per-hand minimum. The policy kept the welfare checks away from the chip-and-cash windows between Friday night and Sunday night when bigger fish were likely to swim by and test the waters of the new establishment.
Joseph Cellini exchanged five thousand dollars at the roulette table and the dealer slid five stacks of hundred-dollar chips in his direction using both hands. Cellini peeled a few chips off the top and placed them on red and even.
The neckless muscle he kept in tow was standing behind him, uncomfortable in his spruced-up, on-the-town attire. His slacks pulled at his thighs, his shirt stretched at the seams, his poorly knotted tie lashed around his massive neck.
The dealer set the roulette wheel in motion and with a flick of the fingers the white ball jetted around in the opposite direction. As the two opposing forces of the roulette wheel performed their dance, Joseph Cellini stood from his seat. He motioned for his neckless accomplice to take his place and surveyed his environment for a quiet corner. A dozen paces away, Joseph Cellini found a modicum of solitude near a group of senior citizens at the Pai Gow poker table.
Joseph Cellini flipped open his phone and simply said, “Speak.”
“You know who this is?” Dan asked.
Joseph Cellini took a moment to process the voice and responded. “What do you think?”
“I’m going with yes.”
A slot machine in the distance dispersed a ten-thousand-dollar jackpot, accompanied by flashing lights, buzzes, beeps, and the shriek of a lone victor celebrating with a standing pelvic thrust.
“You at the new casino?” Dan asked.
“I am,” said Joseph Cellini.
“Well, if you are still interested in the guy responsible for injuring your daughter, the bomb maker himself is currently unconscious in the basement of a house in Old Town Alexandria named for a Civil War General. The front door is open.”
“Will he be expecting me?”
“Depends on how long it takes you to get there.”
“Something you did?”
“No.”
“Do I need to provide maid service?”
“There won’t be time. You can be at the house I described in less than fifteen minutes from your current location. If you are interested, you need to hurry. And if you can make it, ignore the problem with the water supply.”
“I assume that is self-explanatory.”
“Should be. I can delay calling the police but not all night. So if you are interested, get moving.”
“What about a financial settlement to cover my art gallery losses?”
“As I said in the hospital, these guys were never going to negotiate a settlement.”
Joseph Cellini breathed heavily into the phone.
Dan continued. “But in the spirit of good neighbor relations, I have a solution to your financial concerns that you will find amicable. I’m requesting a meeting. Good Time Charlie in Prince Georges County. Be there. Sunday. High noon.”
“I’ll be there.”
—
Dan slid into the driver’s seat and put the key into the ignition.
“Secret phone call?”
“I don’t think we should be talking about secrets.”
Sue pulled at her wrist and scowled.
“Probably not going to break the zip ties with that angle,” Dan said flatly. “Sit there while I make another call.”
Sue scowled again and Dan dialed another number. Detective Wallace answered on the second ring and Dan recognized from the sound of the detective’s voice that he was smoking a cigarette. Dan imagined the detective in his car, one hand on the wheel, one hand on the phone, a cloud of smoke, and a cancer stick hanging from his lips with an ash tail that was ready to drop. Dan pushed his own sudden desire for a smoke from his mind.
“I see you called,” Dan said.
“I did.”
“I was occupied. Did you find the gray BMW?”
“Are you aware that the gray BMW M5 is a particularly rare vehicle?”
“I heard that rumor. I didn’t have time to check it out myself.”
“Well, it was an important piece of information.”
“Do you have an address?”
“I can do better than that.”
“You have eyes on it?”
“Two cars ahead of me. We crossed the Key Bridge five minutes ago. Unfortunate for the driver. Now we are in my jurisdiction. My rules.”
“I remember your rules. See if you can give them an hour in a cell at DC general.”
“Still complaining about that?”
“Did you get an ID on who owns the car?”
“I called it in as soon as I picked up the tail and had the tags in sight. It is owned by Michael and Kate Smith. Leesburg, Virginia.”
“There is no way those are real identities.”
“I was thinking the same thing. The names seem a little too generic.”
“How did you find the car?”
Detective Wallace took a long drag on his cigarette and exhaled slowly. Dan recognized the sound and buried a pang of envy.
“I followed the car
from a gas station at Kirby Road and Route 123.”
“You must have spoken with Alex the Russian.”
Detective Wallace took another long drag. “Da.”
“Very funny.”
“I told you I was still on the case. Alex told me where I could likely spot the car and which direction it would be heading.”
“Why would he tell you that?”
“Let’s say I owe him one.”
“I’m sure that is a story in itself. Where are you?”
“Wisconsin North. Turning onto Idaho.”
“The next turn is going to be a right onto Porter.”
“How could you know that?”
“They are heading back to the scene of the crime.”
“Your sister-in-law’s house?”
“On my way.”
—
Dan turned the engine, checked the mirrors, and put the car in drive.
“What about the guys inside?” Sue asked.
“I don’t think we have to worry about them. When they don’t check in with Reed Temple, you can bet someone will show up to sterilize the location. They won’t be there in an hour.”
“You’re probably right.”
Dan checked his mirrors again and noted the empty street behind him. “Time to hear what you have to say. Who do you work for?”
“I am employed by the Central Intelligence Agency. I was assigned to follow you and to provide daily reports in order to ensure your safety.”
“Reports to whom?”
“A superior. Someone I’ve never met. I was called into my director’s office and ordered to an offsite location. I was given hard copy orders from an administrative assistant who provided a file for me to study. The file was about you. After I studied the file, I was briefed by someone behind a two-way mirror.”